IxDA Bloomington, IN

Message to the group

Jambo, designers!

Thank you for joining your local IXDA chapter. You have shown your interest in helping Bloomington become a thought-leader in design theory and pracitce.

Congratulations on taking this important step in your career. Being an individual who contributes to an active community can be difficult. As someone who is passionate about design, you probably have a lot of side projects, meetings, and important business to attend to. It's both the boon and curse of being passionate! Making time for this community will only benefit you, but it will especially benefit others. No matter where you are in your career, your perspective matters to the group. Use this venue to get to know the community, but also to better yourself by being a contributor.

The IXDA's mission, as a collective, is to "improve the human condition by advancing the discipline of interaction design." That's a tall order! As we progress through our meetings and interactions together, I encourage you to really embrace this concept -- improving the human condition. What does it mean to do that when you sit at your cubicle grinding out wireframes? When you are in the classroom? While doing an ethnographic study? Our own group's goal doesn't have to match the parent organization's, but keeping it in mind could provide an interesting lens in our future discussions.

So what are we going to be doing, anyway? That's up to you! As cliché as that may sound, we really want this group to grow and evolve as the members see fit. Our group is a design itself -- one that requires iterations, one that is messy at first. As we meet up and get to know each other, please give us your feedback and suggestions on what you'd like to see!

What's next? We plan on sending out newsletters to inform everyone on upcoming meetups, important dates, recaps from previous meetings, and other information that members want the group to know. In particular, our next email will have information on our first meeting in the middle of October. Untile then, be sure to say hi to us and get to know some of the other members on Twitter, Facebook, and the Meetup Page.

If you have worked on an awesome interaction design project in the past 2 years, consider entering it into the IxDA Interaction Awards. They are open to all companies, individuals & students and the deadline is October 1. Prizes include a trophy, cash prize of $750-$1500, and discounted registration to the Interaction '13 Conference. They'll accept both concepts and production work. And you should check out the videos and materials from the winners from last year because they're really inspiring.